Sea Venture Flying!

Here’s the latest from Sea Venture’s Captain:

So, shortly after you & I chatted this morn, I suggested to the First Mate (Erwin of Thea Renee fame) that maybe we should raise the mains’l. He agreed and said that in the 15 knot of beam wind we could probably hold 5 and a half knots even with Mr. Lehman off duty. I replied that I needed a better turn of speed than that, but we’d certainly conserve some fuel by flying the main. So we turned into the wind, raised all sails, and shut down the engine. After we reestablished our heading the boat speed steadily climbed until it stabilized at over 8 kts! We saw some readings as high as 9.5 knots for short periods when the wind was over 17 kts. Sea Venture was definitely kicking up her heels. We averaged well over 8 kts SOG for several hours. This fat Old Lady is acting like a regular Wind Witch!

The wind has started to slacken this afternoon, currently showing just under 15kts on the stbd beam, but we are still averaging well over 7 SOG. Without Mr. Lehman’s yammering, it is most peaceful, SV is enjoying it here in the Caribbean, Trade Winds seem to be her kind of wind.  The sea is running about 4-5 feet at 7-8 secs, with some whitecaps. The only sound is the splash & hiss of bow wave along the hull and the creak of the lines thru the sheet blocks. Our wake makes a happy gurgling sound. The boat motion is fairly smooth and gentle although somewhat rolly. This would make good marketing copy for a cruising magazine.

Another bit of joy is that for every hour that Mr. Lehman is off duty, we don’t have to feed him the $7-8 worth of high priced staple he is so fond of. Who knows what diesel will cost in Grand Cayman?

I butchered a pineapple this afternoon, the First Mate declared it to be the best he had ever tasted. Later on we are going to fix some kind of pasta with some of the packaged frozen dinners you left for us. We tend to eat only twice a day on passage, there just doesn’t seem to be the time or inclination to do more.

Saw a lot of big ship traffic this morning, but hardly anything at all this afternoon. Lots of flying fish here, but not nearly the amount of sealife we are used to seeing in the Pacific.

Bernie is starting to find a niche that he fits into and is comfortable with. He seems quite at ease and is learning quickly. We have been having him be hands-on as much as possible so he can have a first hand experience at almost every task onboard. He does well on watches. The three man crew is working well, short watches with plenty of rest time in between.

We are well clear of all charted hazards enroute to GC. So we are doing a straight shot, which gives us a very nice beam reach with the current wind, hopefully it will hold. We’ll probably spend a couple of days in GC to rest and see the sights, neither E or B have been there. Berrnie didn’t get his dive in at San Andres, he really wants to do one in GC.

The Garmin is still threatening to have us in Georgetown by 10:30 in the morning, but we will see how the wind holds.

A little sparrow has been following us off and on all day. He seemed quite tame, landed on the rail next to me, jumped onto my hat, I took the hat off a coaxed him onto my finger. Beautiful dark blue and rust-orange colors. He seemed to be very happy there, sat on my finger for long time, I tried to get him to sit on Erwin’s arm, but he didn’t like Erwin as much and flew off. Bernie took some pix.

We may have some squalls building, so I’m going to quit & try to send this before wer have to get busy.